Free Software in Education

We actively promote the use of Free Software in schools and
universities as it encourages schooling of understanding over
product training and upholds the scientific principle.

Already during its first general assembly, FSFE identified education as
one of the most important areas for activity so young people and
students would have the chance of getting in touch with knowledge instead
of mere product schooling. Therefore the FSFE started a Free Software in
Education working group to focus on these efforts. Today, it acts as a hub and works on
monitoring the European situation. We participate in Free Software
events and assist other initiatives in making the change possible.

Amongst other arguments for Free Software, here are four of the key benefits for education:

Sharing: Using free software allows schools to
teach children to share and cooperate.

Learning to program: The possibility/freedom to
tinker motivates children to learn more.

Easy to administer: Free Software is stable,
secure and reliable. It offers unrestricted access to the source
code, thus allowing to modify or adapt it to the schools'
needs.

Licences: With Free Software, teachers can give
a copy to each student. There is no risk to mislead any child
to use an illegal copy.

Together with FSFE and other partners, the Bündnis Freie Bildung ("Free Education Alliance") today publishes its position paper about the creation and usage of Open Educational Resources (OER). Therein, the Bündnis demands a consequent publishing of all OER-material under public licences and their availability as Free Software and in Open Standard formats.